Posted on 26th Mar, 2023 in Travel
In 2022, I changed literally every major aspect of my life in the span of a few months. I'm still figuring out how to write about what that actually entails but I've tweeted a little about it. On top of that I have a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I'm also working on some new business ventures while continuing my anime convention shenanigans. Honestly it's been absolutely exhausting but very exciting. That's why as soon as the new year began I was already in dire need of a vacation.
Around that time, a friend sent me an ad for a sale on the Amtrak USA Rail Pass. The pass allows you to take 10 ride segments (getting on and off any one of their trains or buses counts as a segment) on any almost any service they offer (not Acela) in the entire US. So that rules out taking a train up to Canada and riding the "high speed" service on the Northeast Corridor but everything else is covered. So after a few days of deliberating, I added the pass to my cart and checked out.
During the lockdown era of the pandemic I was travel-starved. I went so far as to recreate a 70 day trip by rail and ship from New York to Japan with modern day routes. I think that that experience influenced my desire to take a train from one side of the United States to the other. So I started with that itinerary and began modifying it. Since a number of my friends (including the one who told me about the sale) have relocated to California in the last few years, I could add stops in their cities to visit them and still have a quite a few ride segments left over. Then I just needed to close the loop and work my way back home.
Once I had announced the draft of my itinerary, people took quite an interest. Eventually I'd be lobbied to add stops to visit even more people. Thus, what had started as a leisurely trip to visit a handful of friends ballooned in to something much more ambitious. While I would still have the time and space to think over certain things on this trip, it was now a full a full blown cross country tour.
Introducing the Solid Rail Disaster Tour 2023! I will be writing about this journey non-linearly over the next few weeks. Although this post was written at the end of the 3rd leg of the tour, it's only the second entry released (broadcast order). However, it probably should be read first (chronological order).
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